BT took the lead by announcing it was investing £2.5bn to make fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2015. BT has since invested another £300m to bring that forward by a year.

Although the upgrade from February means a quarter of Virgin Media customers will meet the basic speed requirement of 30Mbps set as an EU target for 2020, analysts say Virgin still covers mainly urban areas and does not reach as many people in rural areas as BT and other providers.

The UK ranks around 35th globally with an average broadband consumer download speed of 11.65Mbps, according to the BBC.

Virgin Media say that when the roll-out is complete, that average could rise to around 16.46Mbps, taking the UK several places up the broadband speed rankings to 19th.

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